He just had to have the bear sculpture

Tuesday

Dec 4, 2012 at 12:01 AMDec 4, 2012 at 10:12 AM

Bears don't typically interfere with central Ohio real-estate deals. But this was no ordinary bear. It stood 6 feet high, carved from the remains of an ash tree behind a Worthington home that Adam Grieshop wanted to buy.

Jim Weiker, The Columbus Dispatch

Bears don’t typically interfere with central Ohio real-estate deals.

But this was no ordinary bear.

It stood 6 feet high, carved from the remains of an ash tree behind a Worthington home that Adam Grieshop wanted to buy.

Grieshop loved the home, and he loved the bear — so much so that the bear became shorthand for the home in conversations with his real-estate agent, Koretta Tennant.

“It was a running joke that I was buying a place with a bear,” said Grieshop, 31, a district sales manager at Scotts Miracle-Gro.

Grieshop and the seller amicably negotiated a deal. A day before closing, the seller even met Grieshop and Tennant at the home for a final chat.

After the seller described how a friend had carved the bear from a diseased ash tree, he got in his car and headed to his new home in Maryland, leaving Grieshop and Tennant for a last tour.

“Koretta looked out the window and acted like she saw a ghost,” Grieshop recalled. “She said, ‘ Oh my God, Adam, you’re not going to believe this. They took the bear.’ I thought, ‘They stole my bear!’??”

In place of the bear stood a stump, freshly covered in sawdust.

By this time, the stump’s former occupant was on its way to the East Coast in the back of a moving van.

“I said, ‘They can’t do that.’ The bear was attached; it’s like cutting down a tree,” Tennant said. “I said, ‘We need to get this bear back.’??”

With less than 24 hours to go before closing, Tennant’s time was short. She called the listing agent, Lynn Nadler, also with Keller Williams.

“I’ve been doing this for 22 years, and I’ve never had to think of a bear carving in the backyard,” said Nadler, who in turn called the seller.

The seller, who could not be reached for this story, viewed the bear as personal property and simply assumed he could take it, Nadler said. Even though he didn’t want to relinquish the bear, the seller called the moving company to see whether the driver could turn around, Nadler said.

He was told no — the 600-pound bear was going to Baltimore. Another idea, that Tennant’s cousin drive the bear from Maryland to Columbus, also didn’t pan out.